Spain

A taste of San Diego. During a Nov. 2014 trip to Munich, Mark Cafferty(L) and Ian Wendlandt (R- Chief of Staff, Stone) present Stone Beer to Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter.

On tap this week: Another ‘first’ for San Diego. At a time when many San Diego breweries are going through acquisitions, Stone Brewing Co. is going global.

In 2014, EDC Investor Stone announced it would be the first American craft brewer to independently build, own and operate a brewery in Europe. And they chose Berlin, arguably the beer capital of the world (pre-San Diego beer reign, that is), as the place to do this. This week, Europeans got their first taste of these San Diego-influenced, Berlin-brewed Stone craft beers. The hop-centric craft beers made their debut at more than 40 locations throughout Germany, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

“This is a significant moment for craft beer internationally,” said Stone CEO & co-founder Greg Koch in a company statement. “We’ve worked long and hard to introduce our vision of bold, innovative craft beer to Europeans and that day has finally arrived.”

Stone is not just introducing great beer to the masses, but with it, is also giving foreign audiences a taste of San Diego. San Diego will benefit if more companies, not just in the beer industry, but in medical devices, software and other high impact industries, follow suite. Global companies pay higher wages, are less likely to go out of business, increase productivity of the domestic market, and spur more efficient development of technology and R&D. In 2015, EDC launched its Go Global San Diego initiative to enable other San Diego companies to engage in global markets. And every time EDC travels internationally, it always brings Stone beer with it.

As Bruce Katz, a key EDC partner at the Brookings Institution, said, “You don’t export unless you are making a high-quality product that the rest of the world wants…And that’s the San Diego story.” Global interest has sparked a demand for San Diego beer and Stone is capitalizing on it. It’s our hope that other companies do the same.